Russia slated over torture

UN body probes beating

RUSSIA must halt the torture of detainees and prosecute the perpetrators, including guards caught on video beating an inmate, UN human rights investigators said yesterday.

The UN Committee against Torture, in a rare move, told Russian authorities to report back in a year on progress in holding to account the guards who beat Yevgeny Makarov with truncheons and their superiors who suppressed the year-old tape, which provoked a public outcry.

Despite “numerous, reliable” reports of torture, they rarely led to prosecutions, or those responsible were charged with abuse of authority rather than a crime, said the vice-chairperson of the committee, Claude Heller.

“The strengthening of the rule of law would be in a certain sense our main recommendation,” Heller told media.

Committee chairperson Jens Modvig said: “One could get the impression that the prison system in Russia is almost a state in the state, and is not really being scrutinised from the outside. The prison system should be better monitored with a view to preventing the episodes that we see repeatedly.”

The Novaya Gazeta newspaper published the notorious 10-minute video clip last month and said the incident took place in June 2017 in a prison in the city of Yaroslavl, northeast of Moscow.

Russian deputy justice minister Mikhail Galperin told the committee last month that authorities would prosecute the guards. This would be a “very clear signal on the unacceptability of torture”.

Several officials had been removed from their jobs in connection with the case and 11 were in custody, authorities said. Arrests in the case were a “good start”, Modvig said. “Sometimes investigations are stopped or find no violations .... It remains to be seen how Russia will deal with this case.”

The UN committee, comprising 10 independent experts, called on Russian authorities to protect Makarov and his lawyer, Irina Biryukova, who has fled the country, against reprisals. Russia must “combat impunity concerning torture and ill-treatment cases, including by ensuring that high-level government officials publicly... affirm that torture will not be tolerated”, it said.

About 600 000 detainees were held in nearly 1 000 prisons and detention centres across Russia, with 4 000 deaths from various causes recorded each year, “one of the highest rates in the Council of Europe countries”, Modvig said. – Reuters/African News Agency (ANA)